с новым постом!

Привет! Меня зовут Йонас! Это мой пост номер 1!

Since I'm not really capable of producing more than a few coherent lines of Russian at the moment I will be forced to continue on in English,but stick with me and we might actually see some improvement. I went to Moscow last year, and there, at a diary meet-up I promised some people to start writing one myself.I must admit that only 4 months to arrive to the actual point of writing is a new record. Especially since I wanted to wait until I at least got the basics of Russian down.Although it would seem that I'm still incapable of producing many Russian sentences, I guess that I'm capable of passively understanding around 300 words by now, and have an active vocabulary of somewhere around 70 words, most of them very simple basic words, such as здравствуйте холодно преподаватель and so on. I also know a few sentences from famous Soviet cartoons, my favorite line being:

Это я, почтальон Печкин! Принёс журнал мурзилка!

U can't begin to imagine how long it even took me to write these words and get their spelling right. I am typing on a Russian keyboard, but have to admit that first of all the use of the letter "o" is very hard to appreciate and understand, since it's quite a strange thing to me, as a native Dutch speaker. Maybe some more background on my knowledge and languages. I grew up in West Flanders, where people speak an incomprehensible version of Flemish, which is the Belgian version of Dutch, which is also spoken in the Netherlands. When I was young my parents taught me the standard Dutch language but in school we spoke our regional dialect up till highschool, which in Flanders (since education is a regional thing, not a nationally organised thing, for more information on the stupidities of Belgian governmental constructions watch this short movie ) begins when you are 12. When I was 10, in my 5th grade of primary school, like all Flemish schoolchildren I started learning French. Since French is one of the 3 national languages of Belgium (next to Dutch and German) and since we only got the 40 000 German-speaking citizens forced on us after WW II as a payment for the damage taken, we learn French first. At age 14, 2nd year of highschool we get our first English class, by the age of 16 we get at least one year of German. So all in all we are supposed to know 3 languages by graduation.

Since its quite clear that no education is perfect, most people don't speak any of these languages half decently, but manage to have at least basic knowledge and understanding of them. Most people also know English better then French by the end of their highschool. At university the languages other than English become less relevant, unless you study languages (obviously).

Since my overly smart girlfriend tells me no one reads long blogposts,